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Remember Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web? Seemed like a pretty smart guy. If I were a farmer I wouldn’t mind having him in my barn. After a long day plowing, I’d go into the barn, crack open a beer, spend some time just shooting the breeze with the pig, and one nice winter morning, bacon and eggs.

And those pigs from Animal Farm. Napoleon may be the villain of the book, and more of a pig of action, but he sure does get things done. I may not want him on my farm but I have to admit, some of his right hand pigs like Squealer sure can talk up a storm.

Miss Piggy may not yet have talked Kermit into matrimony (yet, give her time) but she sure does deliver the ham.

Which brings me to Maxwell the GEICO pig.

He seems like a nice guy, and he sure goes places. He flies around the country, he goes to football games and he zip lines, he has dates with attractive women, and he even somehow manages to drive a car, though how his hooves reach the pedals remains a mystery. He also uses the latest technology, which brings us to his latest GEICO ad and Maxwell’s trip to the DMV.

You know, I used to like Maxwell. He was friendly and smart (for a pig) but this commercial just makes me feel bad.

“Gots all my pertinents on it and such.”

WHAT? When did Maxwell start talking like a gibbon? (Gibbons are the idiots of the talking animal world.)

More to the point, why did GEICO write that line? What are they going for? Is it a commentary on the people at the DMV? Some particular demographic I am not quite seeing?

Honestly, I am not all that concerned with the presentation of pigs in media (though I am VERY concerned with cats. Check out my thoughts on LOLcats here.) I am more concerned with what GEICO is thinking about their target audience. Do we not speak proper English? Do we all speak in some sort of combination of slang and illiteracy? Hey, I don’t think every commercial character needs to speak the King’s English or use perfect grammar, but this just stood out like a sore thumb.

Of course, there is also the possibility that this is just a silly little commercial, and kind of funny too.

When American Chopper ended last December, I thought that, with perhaps the exception of a Discovery/TLC special a year or so down the line, this would it be for both PJD/OCC and The American Chopper Weekly Rundown.

I firmly believed, and still believe, that without the television show both of these companies will lose significant orders. After all, despite starting as real motorcycle-building program, the show devolved into little more than commercials for the customers (with bad pranks and fake fights thrown in.) Among people who are much more into bikes than I am, neither Paul Sr. nor Paulie are taken that seriously. They had great name recognition thanks to the network they used to air on, but that’s all over now. The free advertising has come to an end.

So I was pretty surprised when I saw this:

I wonder if GEICO signed their contract before the show was canceled? Or, more likely, since PJD had already done a pair of bikes for them, this might have just been fulfilling a contract for a series of bikes.

But to the point, that is one ugly bike. Not only is it covered in large, comically shaped words, making it look like something out of Schoolhouse Rock, but the giant lizard in the helmet totally fails to scream “military tribute.”

I suppose this commercial is giving some badly-needed visibility to PJD and of course the GEICO contract is nice money, but in the long run, I wonder how much time is left in PJD’s tank. OCC will limp along, I’m sure, but PJD was still a relatively new startup and when last we saw them, Paulie had sunk a lot of money into the new studio he planned to use of commercials and animation.

There’s been little new information about either OCC or PJD online. I assume nothing major has changed since the show ended. I’m always up for some Teutul gossip but one thing I will bet- Mikey and Paul Sr. still have not talked.